Page:The Life of the Spider.djvu/24

The Life of the Spider the very bodies of the subjects studied; for we sometimes find a treble superposition of parasites, as in the Oil-beetles; and we see the maggot itself, the sinister guest at the last feast of all, feed some thirty brigands with its substance.

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Among the Hymenoptera, which represent the most intellectual class in the world which we are studying, the building-talents of our wonderful Domestic Bee are certainly equal, in other orders of architecture, by those of more than one wild and solitary bee and notably by the Megachile, or Leaf-cutter, a little insect which is not all outside show and which, to house its eggs, manufactures honeypots formed of a multitude of disks and ellipses cut with mathematical precision from the leaves of certain trees. For lack of space, I am unable, to my great regret, to quote the beautiful and pellucid pages which J. H. Fabre, with his usual conscientiousness, devotes to the exhaustive study of this admirable work; nevertheless, since the occasion offers, let us listen to his own words, though it be 20